The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (8 page)

As Katniss Everdeen discovers, dumping more food on the problem may not provide a complete answer. Sure, after winning her first Games, she gets enough food to help Gale Hawthorne’s family and her other friends, but the core issue remains that the evil regime in the Capitol still has control over everyone. So Katniss et al fight the Capitol
and
ultimately President Coin in
Mockingjay
because they must
put an end to the root cause
. Replacing Snow’s regime with a similar one run by Coin would continue the same old problem.

Not to get on the soapbox, but seriously, how much different are President Snow and his insane Capitol supporters from many regimes throughout history and in modern times? How much different are Coin and her supporters, who want to institute a new Hunger Games at the end of
Mockingjay
?

HOW THE BODY EATS ITSELF

People like to eat, whether hungry or not, but if hungry, chemical responses zing through our bodies and brains to encourage us to find food. We can become addicted to sugar and fat in the same manner as people become addicted to alcohol and drugs. Sometimes, after eating a lot, we quickly become hungry again—although from a purely physical perspective, we can’t require any more food, our bodies just want it. It’s possible that this “addiction” to food results from mankind’s earliest roots as foragers and hunters, when we never knew when we’d have another meal.

Casting aside for the moment the idea that people often eat too much, let’s return to the unpleasant topic of starvation. As the body grows increasingly hungry and without food, the brain ceases to register the hunger as acutely as it recognizes it in the first stages of starvation. The person feels less hungry and is satisfied by increasingly smaller amounts of food.

Eventually, hunger leads to death as the body literally eats itself. It may be hideous to consider that your body may one day cannibalize you, but alas, it is true: If you starve long enough, you will be your own cannibal.

As the brain runs out of sources of glycogen, it cannibalizes the body’s protein to get it. The muscles are used, and finally, the heart.

Think about newborn babies, who awaken every few hours at night because they’re hungry. They’re too young to produce sufficient glycogen, which is the way our bodies store sugar, and they need glycogen to think, to move their muscles, to keep their cells functioning. The calories we ingest eventually turn into glycogen in our bodies.

When the body is hungry, it uses stored calories as fuel, with approximately 85 percent of the calories coming from fat, 14 percent from protein, and the remaining 1 percent from carbohydrates that come from blood glucose or liver and muscular glycogen. If your body has 100,000 calories stored in fat, 18,000 in muscles, and 300 in glycogen, you won’t last too long.

Minimally, you need glucose for your brain. But when you fast, at first the glucose level drops in your blood, which in turn, drops the insulin level circulating in your blood. As the insulin drops, your body tissues release fatty acids that travel through your blood to the liver. A hormone is released that raises your blood sugar level. Your liver converts and depletes its glycogen—still within the first day of fasting. In addition, your liver converts the glycerol that, along with fatty acids, make up the triglycerides in your body, and the lactic acid in your muscles also starts converting back into glucose.

All of the above happens within twenty-four hours of fasting. After thirty-six hours, your body relies on the use of protein to produce necessary glucose. Your muscles send amino acids to your liver and kidneys for glucose production, and your body adapts and uses less glucose, pushing the glucose produced by your muscles to your brain, where it’s most needed. Your body is now eating your muscles.

At this point, your body revolts against its own cannibalization! You might have a headache and stabs of pain behind your eyes. If you continue to fast, then by the third day, most of your body’s energy is now coming from converting your muscles into glucose. In addition, your liver kicks into action and turns fatty acids in your body into ketone bodies, which cells can use instead of glucose. As your body desperately tries to save its remaining protein, that is, your muscle tissues, it sends ketone bodies into your brain; and by day four, ketone bodies are supplying much of the fuel for your struggling brain.

After a week or so, you contract
ketoacidosis
, which typically is seen in people who suffer from diabetes. Too many fatty acids are in your bloodstream due to a lack of insulin. Ketone bodies are now supplying the vast majority of your brain’s fuel. Your intestinal walls shrink. Your glucose level is too high, dehydrating your body, and typically by week two or three, you slip into a coma or die.

HUNGER ARTISTS: STARVATION ON PURPOSE

The ultimate gift is food. In
Catching Fire
, Peeta says that he and Katniss will give one month of their food winnings for the rest of their lives to each of District 11’s tribute families (
Catching Fire
, 59). Nobody has ever won the Games and bestowed such a gift upon another district, and Peeta’s declaration shocks and thrills all of the repressed people who hear it.

Hunger is so horrible that in the first novel, Katniss and Gale agree that they’d rather get shot in the head than starve to death (
The Hunger Games
, 17).

And yet, despite the real horrors of hunger, a lot of people do starve themselves on purpose. Some are entertainers and call themselves hunger artists. Others are anorexic, still others go on hunger strikes to prove their points. It is typically a person in the midst of plenty who opts to starve himself. It’s highly unlikely that we’d find a hunger artist, for example, anywhere in the districts of Panem. Though in the Capitol, of course, there are plenty of people with anorexia and bulimia.

First, let’s talk about hunger artists. These are people who starve themselves to entertain other people. In a cruel and twisted way, all of the starving people in the districts of Panem exist to entertain the people in the Capitol. The Hunger Games themselves are an entertainment platform. The starvation, suffering, mutilation, humiliation, torture, and death
of children
amuses the Capitol. Although they don’t
choose
to be hunger artists and it’s all against their will, people like Katniss
are
hunger artists.

The key difference between Katniss and other hunger artists, both fictional and real, is this one component: She is forced to entertain people with her hunger. But what about these other hunger artists?